Louis was in the room, a part of the proceedings, but he felt miles away. He listened to the words swirling around him and fingered the handle of the clawed thing in the pocket of his coat, which he had yet to remove. He stared at his thin legs sprawled out in front of him. Sitting in the middle of three chairs in the office of Father Prior, flanked by his fellow werewolf hunters, Louis felt the breeze of the friar’s robes as he paced back and forth behind them.
Pierrick and Roland described to the saintly man what they’d seen. It was followed by silence, but more pacing. Finally—
“And you have a pistol,” he said, addressing Louis.
Louis nodded slightly.
“Under other circumstances, you would be asked to leave,” Father Prior said. “But tonight, I am thankful that we are not mourning the loss of three more souls.”
The friar set his hand on Louis’s shoulder, gave it a soft squeeze, then withdrew to resume his pacing.
There was some discussion about the beast: that the two men trailed it by the blood it left for about a mile, until concluding that, though wounded, it was likely outrunning them. Louis hardly heard—he was considering whether or not to reveal his find. When he’d first stumbled upon it so literally, he had fully and quite readily assumed it the murder weapon, wielded by human hands, monstrous though the deed. But now, with the very presence of that ferocious, inhuman thing at the scene, Louis was unsure, and thus, also uncertain as to the usefulness of such a revelation.
Further, and perhaps more important to Louis, he couldn’t help but feel personally tied to what had happened. Not because he’d felt a personal connection with Father Apollinaris, pleasant though their forbidden conversation was, but because of all previous events: all the warnings; the poor foal at Pradelles, as tattered as the unfortunate friar; the bizarre interaction at Fouzilhac; and not least, the possibility of the cloaked man.
With that thought, Louis started upright his in chair, startling the others. He turned to Roland.
“You had said earlier, before we went out into the fields, that there was another man housed in the public dormitory. Who was he? What did he look like?”
The old man crossed his arms and looked away.
Louis was surprised to see the soldier’s face still red from where he’d hit him, though it did nothing to raise much sympathy in him. For a brief moment, Louis felt ashamed—not of the slap itself, but of his lack of compassion, particularly as he was surrounded by men of the cloth. He was who he was, and he was not a holy man. He returned to ignoring the old soldier and turned to address the present Father Carthage, who’d been a part of that earlier conversation.
The priest had been so busy gauging the silent, ugly communication between Louis and Brother Roland, he’d almost forgotten Louis’s inquiry.
“Oh!” he remarked as it came back to him. He thought for a moment. “The other man, yes.” He turned to Father Prior, who’d stopped pacing and listened intently. “Father, the man who arrived this morning, just after myself. I didn’t see his face, but he wore a rather imposing hooded cloak. Of a charcoal color.”
Father Prior’s eyes grew wide, as something he’d forgotten flooded his brain.
“Indeed!” He turned to Louis. “Please pardon my lapse in memory, Monsieur Stevenson. Your friend arrived this afternoon, and his message for you slipped my mind completely. And even more so after this night’s events. I do hope you’ll forgive me.”
Louis’s brow furrowed in utter confusion.
“My friend?”
“Oui,” Father Prior continued. “He said to tell you that he will meet you at le Pont de Montvert, though he would likely see you before then.”
“What did he look like?” Louis pressed.
“I could not tell,” Father Prior said, “as Father Carthage expressed, the man wore a rather deep hood. It fell over his face.” He turned his palms up. “It is not our custom to pry, Monsieur Stevenson. Not in matters that appear so delicate—I assumed that he was hiding some deformity, and since I did not note any lesions on his hands, I felt safe that leprosy was not the issue, and perhaps merely a terrible accident of the past had left him malformed.”
The man, Louis presumed, was deliberately hiding his identity.
“Did he call me by name?”
“Why, no, he did not,” Father Prior answered. “In fact, he only called you the writer. And as we are housing no other writer, I presumed it must have been you. You do not know him?”
Louis almost missed the question as he’d nearly slipped back into the private room of his thoughts. There was a cloaked man, and he was being followed.
“Yes,” Louis mumbled. “I suppose I do know him.”
“Well,” Father Prior put his hands together. “Then I suppose you will be meeting up with him soon enough. If you will all excuse me, there are still preparations that need to be made for the interment of Father Apollinaris.”
Father Prior made to leave, but Louis stopped him with a hand on his sleeve.
“May I, Father,” he began. “May I pay my last respects?”
Father Prior’s face grew ashen and grim.
“My son,” he said. “While it is only a shell, it is somewhat . . .” He paused, not finding the appropriate word.
“Ghastly,” Louis finished.
Father Prior nodded.
“But if you feel up to it, you may view him and pray over him.”
Louis thanked him and the friar slipped from the room, the heavy hem of his robe sweeping the floor.
* * *
The chapel of Our Lady of the Snows was plainer than Louis had expected. Instead of muraled, plaster arches and towering stained-glass windows, the vaulted roof was modest and constructed of simple wooden beams. The pews were unadorned, the crosses wood, and the candleholders iron.
When Louis entered, there were but two monks sitting separately in two front pews, whispering their prayers, heads bowed. There was no haze of incense, but the scent lingered tangibly from so many years of vigils and vespers. He walked slowly up the main aisle and the two monks rose silently, moving to the outer ends of the pews, and back up to the exit, acknowledging, he presumed, his need for privacy. Indeed, he thought, he needed it.
In front of the altar—his feet pointing to the nave, his head to the apse—lay Father Apollinaris. Louis approached the corpse, though he was loathe to. It was not dressed, but only covered to the chin with a set of clean robes, as though it had been too difficult to dress such a ravaged body. No part of the man was bare except for his head. The friar’s face was ivory, and Louis studied it, wondering at the stillness of his dead skin, taking note that, in life, the very flesh must have some barely-perceptible movement that signifies the soul surging beneath. The dead man’s mouth set strangely, and Louis saw that it was propped closed with a wooden block beneath the chin. Looking around to be sure he was alone, he pushed the edge of the robe down just a bit. Indeed, he suspected the only part of the poor friar that went unscathed was his peaceful face, as even the block that held his jaw shut sank into the wounds he’d received in that area.
To their devoted credit, there was no blood. None to soil the habit that covered him, none to stain the wood of the block. His body had been so thoroughly cleaned, the men that performed the duty could sleep well knowing they’d helped deliver Father Apollinaris to his heavenly Father cleaner than he’d come into this world. Louis pushed the robes down a little further, searching for the thing that would answer his troublesome question. He prayed he would not have to see more than his spirit could take.
Below the block, the holy man’s flesh lay mangled and torn. Louis marveled at the man’s resilience, for his wounds were so grave, his lingering time had defied the truth of them. His eyes searched the carnage anxiously, hoping not to have to descend to the man’s belly, which, judging by the shape of the covering, could not be seen without a lifetime of nightmares. Then, he found it. Around the edge of the butchery that extended from the friar’s chest to his right shoulder, spread four claw marks, as from an animal.
Louis looked around again, and seeing he was still alone, he moved to the other side of the dead man and looked closely. He thought of the monster’s spread forepaws, its talons flashing. These marks, Louis thought, just didn’t seem large enough—widely spaced enough—to accommodate the size of the wolf. Le loup-garou.
Louis shuddered. He considered his excitable state at the time he’d seen the thing and knew that, in such situations, one’s memory could become exaggerated. He thought briefly to search the body for fur, perhaps embedded in the wounds, but his conscience and his stomach forbade him. Also, it is likely that the brothers had washed away anything that might have remained.
He stared at the marks on Father Apollinaris’s shoulder, and then remembered that he held evidence right in his pocket. If he cannot disprove one, maybe he can prove the other. With that, Louis pulled the bizarre clawed tool from his coat pocket and unwrapped it from the handkerchief. The blood had dried, and the cloth stuck, having to be pulled away. He set the points of it against the dead man’s flesh, just where the wounds ended.
It was a match. Louis re-wrapped the weapon quickly and pulled the robe back up to the friar’s chin. He’d found what he’d needed and best to put things back as they were. But he remained. Louis felt elated at the discovery, but also didn’t know how it resolved anything. It answered the question as to whether or not the murder had been committed by the beast or by a man, but it did not allow Louis to unsee what he’d seen in the fields, nor did it corral and catch this cloaked man, Louis’s only suspect.
It didn’t matter. It was one solid piece of information that could not be disputed. The claws of the creature were too broad to have caused these particular wounds, whereas the claws of the cultivator matched perfectly. One single piece of true evidence was all Louis needed to, at least, be able to sleep a few hours this night, as it gave him that small foothold back to the world he knew, where he could find purchase and return, something he fully intended to do.
Finally, Louis laid his hand across the cold forehead of the dead friar and said a small prayer of his own composition. Then, as a few brothers entered to continue their vigil, Louis bowed silently to them and left the chapel. He made his way to his dark cell, undressed, and crawled into his sack spread across the cot. He penciled the events into his journal—a few of his own thoughts on the matter, some short, rudimentary sketches—and then he extinguished the candle and fell almost immediately into a deep, dreamless sleep that went unperturbed until dawn, even sleeping through the ringing bells that woke the brothers for their first office of the day at 2 a.m.
Sock it to me...